Best credit card for Kohl's
Kohl's has its own Capital One card, and it is the only card in our database with a rate that applies at Kohl's specifically. Everywhere else in the store's orbit, the answer is simply your best flat-rate card.
Only one card in our database pays a bonus that applies at Kohl's — Capital One Kohl's Rewards Visa at 7.5¢ per dollar. Everything else earns its base rate, where Capital One Venture Business leads at 2.6¢.
Updated 2026-09-16
Cards with a bonus that applies at Kohl's
Ranked by real value — the printed rate multiplied by our conservative value for the currency it pays, so a big multiplier in a weak currency can't win on the number alone. The "what the rate covers" column is the issuer's own printed wording, because that is what decides whether the bonus reaches this merchant at all.
| # | Card | Value | Rate | What the rate covers | Cap | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Capital One Kohl's Rewards Visa Capital One |
7.5¢/$ | 7.5% | Kohl's only: Kohl's stores and Kohls.com, excludes gift cards; not other department stores | uncapped | $0 |
The best flat-rate cards for Kohl's
General-purpose cards ranked by the real value of the rate they pay on everything — what Kohl's earns when no bonus category applies. Store cards and single-retailer cobrands are excluded here: rewards you can only spend at one chain can't answer "what should the rest of my spending go on?"
| # | Card | Base value | Base rate | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Capital One Venture Business Capital One · business |
2.6¢/$ | 2x | $95 |
| 2 | Capital One Venture Rewards Capital One |
2.6¢/$ | 2x | $95 |
| 3 | Capital One Venture X Business Capital One · business |
2.6¢/$ | 2x | $395 |
| 4 | Capital One Venture X Capital One |
2.6¢/$ | 2x | $395 |
| 5 | Citi Double Cash® Card Citi |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 6 | U.S. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card U.S. Bank |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 7 | Fidelity Rewards Visa Signature Elan Financial Services |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 8 | Wells Fargo Active Cash Wells Fargo |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 9 | Apple Card Goldman Sachs |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $0 |
| 10 | Capital One Spark Cash (Spark 2% Cash) Capital One · business |
2.0¢/$ | 2% | $95 |
The Kohl's card's rate is a Kohl's-only rate
The Kohl's Rewards Visa's headline rate applies at Kohl's stores and Kohls.com, and not to gift cards. It does not follow you to other department stores. Away from Kohl's it pays its gas and grocery rates, and its base rate on everything else, which the table above prices against flat-rate cards.
Who it's for
If Kohl's is a regular stop, the store rate is hard to beat with a general card, and the card has no annual fee. If you shop there a few times a year, a flat-rate card that pays the same everywhere is simpler, and the difference on a handful of purchases is small.
The honest caveat
Merchant coding is set by the payment networks, not by us: a store can change how it codes, a franchise can code differently from a corporate location, and an issuer can revise its exclusions without announcing it. Everything above comes from the printed terms in our maintained database, valued at our conservative point values — but the only way to know what a specific card pays on your charges is to score them. That is exactly what the optimizer does.
Which card should this spending actually be on? The demo re-scores a year of realistic spending against every card in a wallet — free, no signup. See it on sample data →
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